Actor Dustin Hoffman offers a beautiful, personalist insight from his experience of working on the movie Tootsie. Watch it.

How many women have suffered because they are habitually treated (especially by men) not as persons, not as unique individuals, but only as more or less beautiful specimens of the female type. It's so moving to see that he here realizes not only what a suffering that must be for women, but what a loss it is for men. "How many interesting women I never got to know."

Comments (1)

Hoffman is very good here. In my experience knowing a person radically alters my perception of their beauty. I'm talking here about the classic sense of beauty as "that which when seen pleases". If a woman, or man for that matter, has classic Hollowwood beauty but has egotistical and arrogant attitudes, I find that their physical beauty in no way attracts me. In fact, I tend to be "turned of" by the contradiction between their exterior and interior. On the other hand I have known people who were not physically attractive but have beautiful attitudes and it tends to transform their physical appearance; suddenly their smile or voice or some gesture opens up a truly lovely countenance.

I loved Tootsie. I particularly loved the ending where Jessica Lange tells Dustin that she "missed Tootsie". I see Tootsie as a Christ figure in as much as "she" enabled people to find their personal dignity and not allow themselves to be taken advantage of. Tootsie enabled them to be free. This is what Christ does for us.

3D gatherings is the provisional name for a new initiative of ours. The idea is that we be "bodily present" to one another as persons, as opposed to the much "thinner" internet social networking that is all the rage right now, and that rather than focusing on a book or philosophical topic, we share our personal stories.

And the 3 Ds stand for drinks, discussion and devotion.

I hadn't realized that that was birthday of St. Teresa of Avila. (His earlier date was the birthday of Newman.)

Since the focus is his story, I don't want to ask him to come up with a song in her honor, but we'll make sure to mention the date and maybe use one of her prayers in closing. Have you got a favorite? I only know the "Let nothing distress you..."

ok, another way of putting it may be (not that these are mutually exclusive): "conversion to the Person of Christ" vs. "conversion to the law, etc." i.e.-- "Prior to Jesus, to convert meant always to “go back” (as the term itself indicates, used in Hebrew, for this action, namely the term shub); it meant to return to the violated covenant, through a renewed observance of the law. [But]Through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah: “return to me"--http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/02/27/fr_cantalamessa_reflects_on_evangelii_gaudium/1126064

I expanded on the general point a while back, when an article at National Catholic Register called "Rules for marrying my daughter" set off all my personalist alarm bells:

Your daughter is not a better daughter if she tries to conform to your judgments and preferences. Her responsibility as a person is not to live the way you think she should, but to live the way she thinks she should. Don’t make her have to fight you off to figure out who she is and what she wants in life. Don’t crowd her discernment with your judgments. Don’t put pressure on her to see things your way. Don’t confuse her morally by acting and talking as if you know better than she does what’s best for her. You don’t; you can’t. The moral life is lived “from within.” It’s better by far for her to make her mistakes and suffer the consequences than to live into adulthood under her father’s thumb, however benevolent a thumb it may be. Just as a young man “tied to his mother’s apron strings” is crippled in his manhood, a daughter under her father’s thumb is crippled in her womanhood.